Operational errors in the banking sector cost users more than 6.4 billion pesos ($317 million) merely in the first nine months of 2016, said National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users (Condusef) president Mario Di Constanzo.

This amount represents an increase of almost 73 percent compared to the funds lost in 2015 and corresponds to more than a million claims that were registered with the agency in the first nine months of 2016. The number of complaints represented a 28 percent increase from the previous year.

“I define it as a bank error, a bank system error, an operational error of the bank that is translated as a bank income that actually does not exist,” explained Di Constanzo.

Di Constanzo said he was not only worried about the low amount that bank returned to users for these kinds of claims, which barely reached 37 percent of the total amount, but he was also concerned about an unknown figure which represents mistaken charges that users have not reported or are unaware of.